Most educational institutions have the big challenge of getting the best deal they can when it comes to admissions and recruitment processing. As the decision-maker, you don’t want to miss out on a chance to close more leads and increase student enrollments.
While most sellers are reluctant to reveal their trade secrets, we will talk about productivity tips for admissions officers in this blog post. Also, we’ll discuss how to quickly screen applications, walk through the screening and scoring criteria, and then go over how to engage with students on a single application called SIVIO.
What SIVIO CRM for higher education does?
With a potential sales tool like CRM, closing a deal is simple. By shifting tedious admission tasks to a CRM, processes can be streamlined and time saved.
Our SIVIO CRM software is purposely built to fill the communication gap between businesses and individuals in higher education. It effectively organizes and maintains data, allowing users to optimize admissions, run a marketing campaign, and finally track results!
SIVIO CRM for higher education improves admissions processes by identifying and recruiting the best applicants, keeping them engaged, and growing enrollment numbers. Our SIVIO CRM is the most effective admission management software that performs all tasks seamlessly.
Five productivity hacks for admission officers to meet enrollment goals
Academic institutions invest time in hiring sales staff. However, they often lack the necessary skills to perform at their best. This could result in a shortfall of potential leads.
For the benefit of your admission team, who are looking for ways to gain and close more sales during the admission phase, here are some of our top-secret productivity hacks.
The following hacks can help admissions officers hire a pool of prospective students.
1. Follow the proper KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
It is undoubtedly challenging to contact a student, schedule an appointment with them, and ensure their presence. Also, it is the most crucial phase of your enrollment cycle.
After they come, it’s not difficult to excite them with virtual or live tours, especially if they are even slightly interested in your program. You can anticipate a sharp rise in enrollments if you can perfect the “lead capture to showing up” process.
The most important KPIs that the majority of admission officers found had to do with the number of starts.
It is believed that admission officers are more concerned with the results, but they should be focused on the KPIs that will lead to those outcomes.
There are some main KPIs that career schools and colleges focus on to achieve their admission targets.
- Lead contact rate: It is the rate of inquiries that admission officers contact through phone or email
- Appointment set rate: It is the rate of students’ inquiries that are converted into appointments
- Appointment show rate: The frequency of counseling appointments, virtual campus tours for inquiries
- Application rate: It is the rate of students who have shown interest in applying for a course
- Enrollment rate: It is the rate of applicants that enroll
- Start rate: It is the rate of enrolled students who have started to attend classes
After you start monitoring these KPIs, you will be able to identify the particular problem. For example, you’ll come up with solutions if your appointment show rate is poor. You can reduce the number of missed appointments by reminding students through SMS or WhatsApp texts about their upcoming appointments.
By keeping an eye on each KPI, you can fix the bottlenecks and take action to close more admissions.
2. Set up an enrollment process for your internal teams and follow it strictly
Institutions frequently use a disorganized, non-standard follow-up process. Most of the time, they are unaware of who is contacting them or where the inquiry is coming from. It’s the cause of the low inquiry to appointment show rate as well.
Most admission officers aim to increase “Appointment Set” rates. However, not many of them are really good at scheduling an appointment. Despite their efforts, it’s not sufficient.
Nevertheless, the gap exists because they are not trained to handle such tasks. Also, they don’t have enough hours in a day to schedule appointments because they are so involved in multi-tasking like talking with prospects, doing paperwork, starting the enrolled students, and other duties.
Solution: You can split your admissions team to handle the following responsibilities so that your staff can focus on a single assignment.
- Setting appointments: You must have a dedicated staff member who can schedule appointments on behalf of counselors/admission officers
- Admission officers: These are the individuals who can have face-to-face conversations or online interactions with students. Their job role is to attract students by displaying the values of your institution and building strong relationships
- Student coordinators: These are the folks who are responsible for handling every piece of paperwork, they make sure that everyone gets financial aid, and they facilitate orientation or other meetings. So, they are the ones to manage all those tasks. After all, you don’t want your admission officers or your appointment setters to seek these jobs
Hence, if your staff or team members do their tasks actively, you’ll observe better results.
3. Have a contact strategy in place
If you allow your sales representatives to use some unique methods like emails and call scripts, that can be helpful for them to generate leads. This technique is vital because if your team does not know what to communicate, there could be inconsistencies and ambiguities in your conversation.
That is why you must analyze and plan scripts, replies, and resources before the enrollment season. You can share these materials with everyone who is involved in admission processing.
In total –
- Make contact strategy plans: Your team should be informed on when to call, text, and email students. Keep in mind that don’t overdo it or stop doing it
- Script everything: Find every communication that needs to follow a predictable pattern. Strive to speak in an interrogative manner. For instance, intriguing inquiries like what motivates you to pursue a career in cosmetology? What made you decide to study cosmetology?
- Create a structure for follow-up: Describe each potential course of action. How to follow up with people who don’t show up, with people who do but don’t apply, and for all potential drop-off point
4. Inspire students to enroll in your course
Institutions are having trouble persuading the students they want to enroll because there are fewer campus tours and events now that the new normal has gotten out of hand. Sales reps cannot develop relationships with prospects by relying just on word of mouth. Campus tours are offered to attract students to the college by showcasing its atmosphere. Institutions are observing a lot more drop-offs in their admission funnel without this.
Yet, you can still recreate the experience by focusing on virtual presentations and campus tours. Virtual presentations have been shown to improve lead-to-show and lead-to-application rates. Comparatively speaking, virtual presentations are significantly simpler than personal interactions. They are much faster, more attentive, and more enjoyable.
There are three top methods for conducting virtual presentations:
- Control your collection: You can have better control over your accessories under your tight budget. You can have accessories like green screens, decent microphones, a nice light source, a good video camera, etc
- Audience direction: Instead of just reading the lines mechanically, make the Excel presentation engaging and captivating. It will spur much more activity
- Control yourself: Give your admission officers skills training. Don’t just leave them in a Zoom room with a camera
5. Take ownership
Generally speaking, admission officers don’t fully control leads due to the lack of a streamlined process. The instances of missed follow-ups and lower enrollments are major causes of this.
Regularly monitoring your team’s performance is a simple way to hold them accountable for their duties. However, not every institution follows that policy. There has been an estimation stating that nearly 40% of higher education institutions produce reports manually through Excel sheets.
So far as you can see, tools like SIVIO’s Educational CRM offer automatic reporting that can reduce the time it takes to navigate through Excel sheets. It is also the secret to success at colleges and universities like Stratford University and Asher College, among others.
Thus, invest in an admissions CRM that enables quick customization and the generation of daily activity reports. You can build your own dashboards so that you can filter out unnecessary information and only see the data that matters to you.
How to screen 1000s of applications quickly on SIVIO
Managing a large number of applications would definitely require a robust system in the education sector. Fortunately, there are numerous education management software options available that could help you quickly and efficiently screen thousands of applications. SIVIO, an education management platform, is one such option that has been created to streamline the application process for students and make communication between students and administrators easier.
The following are some useful tips for using SIVIO to manage your student applications and communications:
- Set up a wide screening process: Before you begin accepting applications, set up a wide screening process that will help you quickly identify the most suitable applicants. Collect all the necessary information from applicants, such as transcripts, resumes, and personal statements, by using SIVIO’s customized application form. Moreover, you can use the platform to set up automatic filters that automatically mark applications that meet particular requirements, like GPA or test results
- Use SIVIO’s built-in communication tools: It’s important to update students on the progress of their applications once you receive them. With SIVIO’s built-in communication system, you can send personalized messages to a single student or group of students. This system can be used to schedule interviews, give automated updates on the application review process, or ask students for more information
- Collaborate with other administrators: If you’re handling a large number of applications, it’s important to collaborate with other administrators to ensure that everyone is on the same page. SIVIO enables access control to multiple users, allowing you to review applications and make decisions as a group
- Use SIVIO’s analytics to track progress: With the help of SIVIO’s powerful analytics tools, you can keep a close watch on the status of your application review process in real time. These tools can be used to identify bottlenecks in the process, monitor the performance of particular reviewers, and make necessary improvements whenever it is required
- Give quick feedback to students: After you have chosen a student’s application, it’s essential to give them quick feedback. You can write your own personalized messages or generate automated acceptance and rejection letters using SIVIO. The platform can also be used to arrange follow-up phone calls or meetings with accepted students
Specify screening criteria and score
The applicant’s score is based on the student’s performance in a particular category and its sub-categories. Students’ marks in each sub-category will be used to calculate the applicant score, which will be based on the range of marks provided by the university administrator in the application criteria master.
A score for the applicant will be calculated after reviewing the application. The reviewer will decide the application’s status based on the score.
Manage communication with students in one place
Any educational institution must have effective communication to be successful, especially when it comes to student management. Particularly during the student recruitment, admission, enrollment, lead management, and onboarding processes, it can be challenging to track every student’s conversation as there are so many communication channels. To help educational institutions handle student communication within a single, centralized location, SIVIO, a cloud-based admission management software, can be of great use.
A comprehensive suite of tools has been offered by SIVIO for institutions to manage the complete student lifecycle. SIVIO helps institutions stay organized and communicate effectively with students at every stage, from the initial student acquisition and recruitment process to enrollment management and onboarding.
One of SIVIO’s key features is its lead and admission tracking system. Using SIVIO, institutions can simply handle every step of the admission process, from accepting online applications to tracking the progress of each one of them. Admission officers can quickly and easily access relevant information about students to help them make informed decisions about their applications or admissions.
SIVIO can assist institutions in managing the enrollment process after a student has been accepted, from collecting deposits to verifying documents. Moreover, the platform offers students a thorough onboarding process that includes course registration and access to online orientation materials.
SIVIO offers institutions a strong education CRM in addition to handling the admissions process. Institutions are better able to understand the needs and behaviors of their students when they can store and analyze student data. They can then customize their communication and engagement strategies to improve both student achievement and retention.
The student community feature of SIVIO allows students to communicate with the university and with one another through an online portal. By allowing students to interact with the institution outside of the classroom, this feature promotes a feeling of community and increases student engagement.
Lastly, SIVIO integrates with Salesforce for Education, giving institutions more powerful tools for handling their student data. Institutions can use Salesforce to manage alumni interactions, track student progress, and access a variety of educational software to enhance students’ outcomes.
To sum up, SIVIO offers institutions the tools they need to increase student enrollment, engagement, and success with features like lead and admission tracking, enrollment management, education CRM, a student community, and integration with Salesforce.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has provided every piece of information about our SIVIO application and its functionality. If you want to understand more about its features and evaluate how this app can meet your specific educational and business requirements, connect with our team of SIVIO experts for a free consultation.